PG&E, SMUD prepare for arrival of atmospheric river, potential power outages
SACRAMENTO — Agencies across California are scrambling to batten down the hatches before Wednesday's major storm and to restore power to powerless areas before this next wave of weather hits.
Just before the clock struck 12 on New Year's Eve, the lights in Sacramento went out.
"You don't expect that," said Nancy Bothwell.
Bothwell lives in the Land Park neighborhood and like so many, she is living by candlelight for days waiting patiently for power to return.
"You don't realize how much you miss when you don't have electricity. You don't realize how quickly it gets cold," she said.
But time is running out. SMUD told CBS13 there are roughly 100 damaged power poles in the Sacramento area, and it takes about eight hours to fix each one.
"SMUD is working at full capacity as it continues to recover but now we have to focus on Wednesday's storm," said SMUD spokesperson Gamaliel Ortiz.
SMUD has doubled its crews and they're not the only ones. CBS13 spoke with the regional vice president of Pacific Gas and Electric at their state headquarters in Vacaville.
"This is where we make decisions on where we are deploying crews and if there's anything that needs to be monitored during the event," said Vice President Ron Richardson.
Richardson said the storm damage is unprecedented and PG&E is preparing for the worst.
"We did not anticipate the damage we're seeing, especially in the Sacramento area, Yolo County," he said.
To prepare for more wild weather ahead, the agency will have help as mutual aid crews from Southern California, Washington, Oregon, and even Montana are on the way.
"It allows us to reach out to customers a lot faster. We're going to show up. We brought in 380 crews by Friday. We have local emergency centers set up to where we can actually manage this event," Richardson said.
When this next storm hits, both agencies have protocols in place which prioritize power restoration to critical infrastructure like hospitals, schools, and to medical aid customers and then they start hitting the areas most largely affected.
We did ask PG&E if it helps when customers call in outages and they said they are alerted automatically but it does help to get additional calls for more specific locations.
